Innovid, a CTV ad delivery and measurement platform, is planning to go public, and hopes to be valued at $1.3 billion. It becomes the latest in a flurry of ad tech companies which have gone public over the past year.
The business is planning to go public through a merger with ION Acquisition Corp. 2, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) run by ION Asset Management Ltd.
Innovid is planning to raise $403 million, achieving this through a $153 million private investment in public equity (PIPE) and $253 million contributed from the SPAC. The deal is expected to close in Q4 2021.
Innovid will retain 64 percent of the combined company following the close of the merger deal.
SPACs are companies that raise money through an IPO and then use that money to help other companies go public through mergers.
ION Acquisition Corp 2 is, as the name suggests, ION Asset Management’s second SPAC. Its first, ION Acquisition Corp 1, announced plans in January to merge with Israeli recommendation engine Taboola, a deal which will value Taboola at $2.6 billion.
CTV and ad tech are both sectors in which there has been a great deal of financial interest over the last year. Within the last year ad tech companies DoubleVerify, Viant, PubMatic, AppLovin and Sprinklr have all either filed for or completed an IPO.
Zvika Netter, CEO and co-founder at Innovid, said in a statement that “the rapid shift of viewership from linear TV to streaming has driven marketers to make CTV a strategic investment focus”.
“We are proud to have built an independent and neutral software platform to allow advertisers to create, deliver and measure digital TV ads and aim to continue to provide the industry a market leading and transparent offering independent of the large technology walled-garden players who dominate many other parts of the digital world,” he added.
